One of the oil paintings, dated 1853–54, contains a narrative that has played a considerably important role in Bektashi religious experience throughout the centuries and across cultural contexts. This narrative relates to both diachronic and synchronic dimensions of historical and contemporary Bektashism. It presents the viewer with two rival Sufi ‘world models’ in binary opposition to one another.  On the left side, it features the time-honored representation of the lion rider. On the right side, oriented towards the rider, two kneeling figures ‘mount’ a large rock. The inscriptions identify the lion rider as Karaxha Ahmed Sultan, the central figure on the rock as the 13th-century Haxhi Bektash Veli (1209–1270), and his companion as Sari Ismail Sultan.

The ‘lion rider with serpents’ on the left portrays the miraculous ‘power’ over beasts wielded by a Muslim mystic, evidenced here by his capacity to break in a dangerous feline while brandishing a venomous serpent as a whip (some other representations also add bridle and reins). This pivotal motif can be traced back to 12th-century Islamic hagiographical accounts and is frequently depicted in Islamic miniatures and drawings. It has an extremely wide geographical distribution and seems to have roots in the worlds of Iranian and Indian art.

The two ‘rock riders’ are characterized by their tall, pointed felt caps with green turbans wound around the base. Distinguished by a long white beard, the larger central figure, Haxhi Bektash Veli, holds prayer beads in his right hand and a staff of authority in his left. His high status is underscored by the presence of an attendant, Sari Ismail Sultan, a smaller beardless figure deferentially positioned slightly behind him. Sari Ismail is depicted in a humble posture and wears a red twelve-sided earring of a type we will encounter again below.

By gazing at a painting portraying the miracles of riding a wild beast while handling poisonous serpents or riding on and controlling inert substances such as walls or rocks, viewers can transcend literal approaches to viewing. Visitors who were well-versed in Bektashi teachings confirmed in interviews that their viewing of the painting offered valuable clues to a batin understanding of this Bektashi symbolism, allowing them to receive special knowledge. At the same time, the religious materiality itself served to unlock the potential of at least some viewers to understand the batin. These interviewees explained that the visual codes intimated the riders’ subjugation of their somatic selves and their mastery over their nefs (Arab. nafs, ‘soul’ or ‘self’), representing the irrepressive tendency of the nefs, always wanting to rush out ahead and constantly needing to be tamed and domesticated. Mounting, in this context, symbolizes mastering. Once harnessed, the nefs will help transport the riders further along their journey on the mystical path. The ultimate goal of this journey is to lose oneself in God (a state referred to as the ‘fourth gate,’ see below), the attainment of spiritual death before physical death. This quest for death before dying is based on a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad: ‘Die [to this world] before you die!’ (Arab. mutu qabla an tamutu).

At first glance, the painting seems to portray the age-old miracle of animal mastery being surpassed by the even more impressive feat of giving life to an inanimate medium, a wall or rock. However, on closer inspection the real aim of the representation is in fact to express harmony. Stories of such marvels were particularly popular in the context of the socio-religious movements of heterodox forms of mysticism that arose in the period between the 13th and the 16th centuries across the Muslim world. These included the mendicant, itinerant and often celibate Qalandars, whose antinomian asceticism rejected normative Islamic practice and with whom Baba Mondi explicitly associates the Bektashis. Karaxha Ahmed’s challenging of his rival Haxhi Bektash to a miracle contest subsequently made its way into Bektashi hagiographies (e.g. the late 15th-century Vilayetname – lit., ‘Document of Sainthood’ – of Haxhi Bektash, written by Uzun Firdusi between 1481 and 1501). It goes without saying that the contest was won by Haxhi Bektash’s ability to make a rock move.

Miracle contests between leading mystics are a recurrent feature in hagiographies and oral histories, yet the narrative depicted in the painting seems to go beyond this single dimension. This is alluded to by the image of a white dove above the two mystics. On the one hand, this visual trope reminds the informed viewer of another characteristic feature in Sufi hagiographical anecdotes: the story of the battle between a hawk and a dove. An allegorical interpretation of this story is found in the Vilayetname. Utilizing the potential for conveying ‘truths’ esoterically, the vita relates that a group of dervishes, led by Karaxha Ahmed, set up a gigantic wall to prevent Haxhi Bektash from coming to Anatolia in their fear that he would remove them from their position of authority. Haxhi Bektash took the form of a dove to fly over the wall and landed on a rock in the village of Suluca Karahöyük, near the central Anatolian town of Kirsehir. One of Karaxha Ahmed’s disciples, Haxhi Doğrul, was sent out in the shape of a hawk to catch the dove. When the hawk was about to seize the dove, Haxhi Bektash transformed back into a human and grabbed the hawk by the throat. The subdued creature was then sent to invite Karaxha Ahmed’s dervishes to come to Haxhi Bektash, which they did.

The white dove in this painting, a representation of Haxhi Bektash, the victor in the battle, descends upon both protagonists. Emitting golden rays, the dove surmounts a pair of garland-bearing angels. This visual trope reminds the informed viewer that, in order to escape persecution by the Ottoman authorities, antinomian religious groups – most of whom were characterized by controversial Shiʿi beliefs and symbolism – sought refuge under the Bektashi banner during the 16th and 17th centuries. The rock, a structural element that can be used in architecture, has therefore been associated with the settled and urbane type of sainthood, thus associating the saint and his attendant with the more conventional, socially-established forms of piety. Wild animals, by contrast, are a feature of the wandering libertine dervishes who lived with beasts. The competitive demonstration of marvels has been seen as signifying the syncretistic process by which the remaining deviant dervishes were gradually absorbed into settled canonical Sufi orders, particularly the Bektashi.

Important as this interpretation is, it must also be remembered that the painting in the reception room was produced in the mid-19th century, at least one hundred and fifty years after the dervish groups had merged with the Bektashi order. By this time, formerly rival dervishes, such as Karaxha Ahmed or Kaygusuz Abdal, had long been ‘naturalized’ as Bektashis. This is why the painter displays the two representatives of different ‘world models’ in harmony with each other and unified by Haxhi Bektash, who stands metonymically for the Bektashi community as a whole.  

Excerpt from “The Literal and the Hidden in Some Albanian Bektashi Religious Materialities,” in: Beyond Karbala: New Approaches to Shiʿi Materiality, eds. C. Funke, F.G. Marei, Y. Shanneik, Shia Texts and Studies, Leiden: Brill [forthcoming]